Paul: You and James often talk about the importance of gratitude as part of a devotional practice, essential to self-inquiry, especially in the practice of karma yoga. Recently you also mentioned sacrifice as part of karma and jnana yoga. Can you expand on these teachings as I am unclear why I need them as the Self, if everything is me? Why do I need to sacrifice, worship or have gratitude toward myself?
Sundari: Freedom from limitation is for the jiva because as the Self, you are already free. In essence then, nothing the jiva does or does not do makes a difference, because you cannot be improved as the Self. But even though the jiva as a conceptual entity is as good as non-existent if and when moksa obtains, it still has an apparent existence. The jiva does not disappear when avidya (personal ignorance), ends for it, even though it is known to be only apparently real. Before moksa obtains, managing the mind with reference to the gunas is a practice of sacrificing habitual binding tendencies in sublimation to a higher ideal – freedom from and for the jiva, or person.
Freedom is not possible without karma yoga. And that requires sacrifice. Not as a loss, but as a gain. We tend to associate sacrifice as being negative, as self-abnegation. And it is from the jiva perspective. But what we are really sacrificing or giving up are the ideas that generate suffering. I.e., that I need something to complete me, meaning identifying with the body/mind as my identity. Life requires sacrifice whether we like it or not. This is a give and take universe, and Isvara keeps the score, but not to punish. Giving is living, and holding on is dying.
The problem with our secular world is that while sacrifice lies at the heart of life itself, we are no longer willing to accept it. In an age where everything is done for a clear reason, usually to make life as easy as possible or for certain profit, sacrifice seems to be a supremely gratuitous and obsolete act. In our affluent spoilt and entitled societies of today, we are accustomed to avoiding even the slightest inconvenience. Our likes and dislikes are commands and we are mostly oblivious to how entrenched they are. Consequently our quality of life as the jiva is greatly reduced because sacrifice is part of living a good and satisfying life, not to mention a life free of the idea of being a limited person.
Humanity deprived of the deeper significance of sacrifice can no longer make sense of fundamental human experiences, such as loss and grief. The value of transience and impermanence, of our precariousness and finitude, which is intrinsic in our human lives, is something we fear instead of embracing. We think that as rational thinking people making sacrifices and following rituals is only for the superstitious or uneducated. Abandoning both seems to make our lives easier, simpler and more intelligent. What we do not see or understand is how much we forfeit as a result.
While religions of the world do not teach Self-knowledge and thus cannot remove the cause of our suffering, which is ignorance, they do play an important role in devotional practice and karma yoga. More people than ever claim to have no religion or religious beliefs today, and in many ways, that is understandable, especially if blind belief in a superhuman deity does not work for you. But relieved of religious duties and rituals we are plagued by spiritual disorientation, and a lack of clear purpose. For all the religious emancipation going on today, secularists are not that happy nor relieved of great burdens or fears. They feel more acutely the insubstantiality of all that surrounds them. The truth is, we are all religious without knowing it because seeking God is seeking the Self. It is a deep human need because a religious attitude turns the mind away from the childish ego, towards the Self, and an understanding of God as non-different from as opposed to much-better- than-me. That is why Vedanta, which is not a religion, recommends a religious attitude and devotional practice as an essential part of self-inquiry.
Devotional sacrificial practice is karma yoga. We sacrifice our desires and fears, of wanting a particular result, to the Field. For karma yoga to work, it requires consecrating all thoughts, words and actions to Isvara in an attitude of gratitude. The gratitude part is what really matters, and that in itself, transforms karma yoga into a devotional, and sacrificial, practice. Gratitude is love in its truest manifestation, which is Self Love. The ability to be grateful is a gift The Field gives the jiva because Consciousness is unchanged by the presence or absence of gratitude.
Though as the Self, you never change, the Field of Existence changes—and as the jiva is part of the field, the ability to sacrifice and be grateful deeply changes its experience and greatly improves its quality of life. It brings our attention to and appreciation for the abundance of life. When the abundance of life becomes our focus, abundance grows.  The more gratitude we have, the more we have for which to be grateful. Gratitude is thus the best attitude to have to everything, especially the tough stuff.Â
The opposite is the privilege and entitlement of feeling aggrieved, hard done by, victimized by life. Entitlement is nothing more than a compensatory attitude for our failures of gratitude. Privilege without gratitude robs us of authenticity, self-worth and a sense of belonging. Gratitude is always a far more reasonable approach to life than the presumption of entitlement, and it eliminates shame, one of the greatest scourges of human existence. Gratitude counts most when things are not going your way, not only when circumstances are conducive to gratitude. It is easy to feel flooded with gratitude observing a beautiful sunrise, or when you are sitting at a banquet with the love of your life.
A sattvic mind lives in gratitude as its ground of being because it sees life as a great gift from The Field. It does not need to dig up a feeling of gratitude or remind itself to ‘to be grateful’. Gratitude is always present in the mind when sattva is dominant (and not when rajas and tamas dominate), even if it is not feeling well or life is not delivering what it wants. This is because a sattvic mind knows that life is not about indulging the likes and dislikes of the wanting person. It is about the one who does not want anything other than what it is.
That said, though gratitude is a wonderful and highly beneficial state of mind, from the jiva perspective, it tends to be short-lived and subject to limitations. It can also be quite abstract. What is really important, and harder to remember putting into practice in the daily minutiae of life, is appreciation. Gratitude and appreciation both facilitate love and emotional growth; it’s hard to imagine enduring love and expansive emotional growth without some gratitude and a lot of appreciation.
But though appreciation generates gratitude, it is possible to be grateful without feeling appreciation. For instance, we’re often grateful for help from loved ones without truly appreciating their efforts and hardships. It is easy to take things for granted. This causes big problems in many relationships. Therefore, in the daily living of our lives, appreciation is a more rewarding quality to develop in terms of improving self-value and relationships, one that is more contagious than gratitude and more likely to prompt reciprocation. A happy life is one that gives without ever worrying about what is getting in return. Isvara never fails us.
This does not require slavish or indiscriminate ‘giving’ to be ‘good’. When you truly appreciate another, a situation or a life experience, you show the universe, your field of experience, that you are cognizant of and value love as your true nature. One of my life mottos is: it takes so little to show you appreciate and care, and it means so much when you don’t. When we pay attention and appreciate we are alive to the true nature and dharma of life. It is love in action. Genuine appreciation is its own reward, but the response from the field is unfailingly satisfying because what we are paying attention to is the Self. We feel good not because we are doing good but because the Self always responds in appreciation of itself.
Many conflate gratitude and appreciation or use the terms interchangeably. But in relationships especially, gratitude ends and can trigger resentment if you are not being appreciated. And we have all experienced how unpleasant it feels when we are not appreciated; it tends to kill love and gratitude. So if you want your life as the jiva to improve immeasurably, make sure that sacrifice, karma yoga, gratitude, devotion and appreciation play a big part in it.
Much love
Sundari